Last fall we came home from a vacation on a dry day to water streaming down the window pane of our downstairs den in our split-level home. Oh dear.
Four months later our Humpty Dumpty house was put back together again. The burst pipe was repaired, the water and mold damage remediated, and the walls and flooring torn out and redone. It turns out that our home didn’t have a pressure regulating valve that would have prevented a massive spike in water pressure causing the pipe to burst. A $150 part could have saved us thousands of dollars in damage.
Why didn’t the original builder install a pressure regulating valve? Maybe he wasn’t aware of the danger? Maybe he was cutting corners to save a few bucks? Whatever the reason, his short-term savings cost us significantly more in the long-term.
In Dan Heath’s book Upstream, Heath argues that this short-term thinking is normal. We operate in response-mode as opposed to preventative-mode. Our health care system is far better at responding to a heart attack than preventing one. Our law enforcement community is far better at responding to crime than preventing it.
This emergency-based mode is a downstream approach, handling problems as they come, but we rarely make our way upstream to fix the systems that caused the problems. Heath argues that we have “problem blindness.” that is, an inability to look past the urgent crises that meet us weekly to transforming our approach by avoiding those crises altogether.
Heath shares the story of Expedia, who, by looking upstream reduced its massive load of twenty million customer service calls every year to hardly any by making a handful of simple tweaks to its booking system. He shares the story of a major urban school district who cut its dropout rate in half after it figured out how to predict which students would drop out—as early as the ninth grade and began a simple process of personal check-ins with these students. And one Emergency Medical System drastically cut the emergency-response time of its ambulances (a significant factor connected to how many live) by using analytics to determine hot spots for calls—and forward-deploying its ambulances to stand by in those areas.
As I read Upstream, I was thinking about how to implement upstream thinking in the Church. There are certainly ways we can do that—proactively reaching out to those who have fallen off our radar, engaging best practices to welcome those new to the church, creating easy and clear for those who attend the church but aren’t engaged in community or service to take the next step in their discipleship journey.
What struck me most is how the church itself is primarily engaged in upstream work.
Multiple studies have shown that those who are regularly involved in church have better marriages and better mental health. In a culture that continues to struggle to create healthy marriages and increasingly struggles with mental health, there is an upstream solution: the church.
Writing for TIME, Bryan Walsh reports that, "Scientists have found, again and again, that those with a spiritual practice or who follow religious beliefs tend to be happier than those who don't. Study after study has found that religious people tend to be less depressed and less anxious than nonbelievers, better able to handle the vicissitudes of life than nonbelievers."[i]
Harold G. Koenig, professor of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine, recently published his comprehensive summary reviewing over a century's worth of hundreds of studies looking at the relationship between religion and mental and physical health. Koenig concluded: "A large volume of research shows that people who are more R/S [religious/spiritual] have better mental health and adapt more quickly to health problems compared to those who are less R/S." Some of the positive effects of religiosity included coping with adversity, hope, optimism, self-esteem, depression, suicidal tendencies, anxiety and psychotic disorders.[ii]
Over at Gallup, Frank Newport reports, “Americans who are religious, as measured by religious service attendance, are more likely to say they are personally satisfied than those who are not religious. The January Gallup data indicate that 92% of those who attend church services weekly are satisfied, compared with 82% of those who attend less than monthly. The difference is even more evident in terms of the percentage who report being very satisfied -- 67% of those who attend weekly are very satisfied with their personal life, compared with 48% among those who are infrequent attenders. Weekly religious service attenders are, in fact, more likely to say they are very satisfied than are those who make $100,000 or more in annual household income.”[iii]
But what about marriage? W. Bradford Wilcox reports that, “Marriages among regular churchgoers are more stable too. The data tells us that Americans who regularly attend church are between about 30 and 50 percent less likely to divorce. They are also about 15 percentage points more likely to say they are happily married, compared to secular couples.”[iv] Wilcox continues, “I find that 55 percent of husbands who attend church services regularly with their wives are ‘very satisfied’ with life; the number is 49 percent for wives. This falls to 27 percent of wives and 28 percent of husbands being ‘very satisfied’ with life among the group of marrieds who do not attend religious services.”[v]
My point is not that church will solve all your problems but it may be the upstream fix to prevent a life problem from making its way downstream. And I’m not suggesting that the way of Christ is easy. The German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who lived in the shadow of the Nazi regime reminds us, “When Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Or, in the words of Jesus himself, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24) meaning there is a cost associating with following Christ. For some, that cost is alienation from family, job loss, giving up hopes and dreams, loss of reputation, or even losing one’s very life. But Jesus also promises us that “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matt. 11:29), and “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). The cost of following Christ is outweighed by the reward of being his disciple and the gift of life in Christ.
We are made for relationship with God and with others (Matt. 22:36-40). Our life is better when we are invested in one of God’s means of facilitating those relationships: the church. Do you want upstream solutions for your life? Look to God’s ancient remedy: his church.
[i] Bryan Walsh, Time, “Does Spirituality Make You Happy?” https://time.com/collection/guide-to-happiness/4856978/spirituality-religion-happiness/?utm_source=link_newsv9&utm_campaign=item_389510&utm_medium=copy
[ii] rank Newport, Gallup, “Religion and Wellbeing in the US: Update,” Feb 4, 2022, https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/389510/religion-wellbeing-update.aspx
[iii] Frank Newport, Gallup, “Religion and Wellbeing in the US: Update,” Feb 4, 2022, https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/389510/religion-wellbeing-update.aspx
[iv] W. Bradford Wilcox, “Want to Slash Your Risk for Divorce? Start Going to Church,” Feb 14, 2024, https://cosm.aei.org/want-to-slash-your-risk-for-divorce-start-going-to-church/#:~:text=Marriages%20among%20regular%20churchgoers%20are,married%2C%20compared%20to%20secular%20couples.
[v] W. Bradford Wilcox, “Want to Slash Your Risk for Divorce? Start Going to Church,” Feb 14, 2024, https://cosm.aei.org/want-to-slash-your-risk-for-divorce-start-going-to-church/#:~:text=Marriages%20among%20regular%20churchgoers%20are,married%2C%20compared%20to%20secular%20couples.
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